Huge thanks goes to Pixy Misa for letting me host my images on Mu.Nu. This was a much-needed resource that came when the comic got too big for my current webhost.

Roxysteve, Scarlet Knight, Carl the Bold, AngiePen, Browncoat, Telas, David V.S., brassbaboon, Deoxy, and all of the other commenters, too numerous to list.

I’m not at all ashamed to admit that many times the comment threads were more entertaining than the comic itself. We talked about quantum mechanics, encumbrance, attacks of opportunity, how to convert a d20 to percent, and techniques for breeding Trolls and Balrogs . We’ve had some geeky, geeky conversations. You folks are a smart bunch. Thanks for sticking around and having clever things to say.

Peter Jackson

We’ve savaged his adaptation and nitpicked the book-to-movie conversion to death, but I have to hand it to him that the movies are a gorgeous piece of cinema, wonderfully cast and beautifully scored. After making this comic, I doubt I’ll ever be able to watch them again, but I will give Peter Jackson credit for doing a tough job for a demanding crowd.

Taken alone, the movies are wonderful. The fact that the movies fall short of one of the greatest works of fiction from the 20th century is not a great sin. For us die-hard fans of the book they could have been better, but they could also have been far worse. For everyone. I’m glad they were made.

New Line Cinema

I don’t know if they didn’t notice or didn’t care, but I am so glad they didn’t unleash the lawyers and spoil our fun.

Wow looks like this was finished more then two years ago and I only now have found it. This was a great web-comic I read the whole thing beginning to end the same day I stumbled upon it.

I even read a chunk of the comments and had to leave one,I don’t usually post comments either. Shamus thank you. I will more of your site now and have book marked and I will probably even remember the name shamus for awhile and who knows, if the rest of your site is this good I’ll probably be recommending anything made by shamus to all the people I know.

I hope this all goes to your head and you get a big inflated ego, lol. although I’m sure you have gotten even better compliments then this. Lol I even spell checked my comment before finishing hows that as a compliment?

Hmm. How come all of a sudden you’re getting comments in 2010? And has anyone that’s found it recently NOT read it in one sitting? Anyways, Awesome, Epic comic and I’m definitely going to see what else I can find here.

Yeah, I was pulled here by Darths and Droids. Which I got pulled to when I was on Tvtropes.org, looking up Plot Armor. I really do love these comics, and I did spend six hours reading this. Great work, Shamus!

TVTropes linked here and made me spend an entire evening reading your comic. Words cannot convey the gratitude I feel. I’ll never be able to see LotR the same way. Never! Now is that good or bad? “Well, there are compensations…”

Well, I’m reading this at work while I’m supposed to be, you know, working, so no I didn’t get to read the whole thing at once; my boss would have noticed. I did have to interrupt the critical tasks that my co-workers were performing a couple of times, though, to share some of the best strips. “Well, we got rid of that annoying wizard guy!”

You, too? Man, I was only informed of the existence of this comic yesterday. It is a FINE piece of internet webcomickery, and it was a genuine pleasure to read one of my favorite fantasy trilogies as interpreted by a windbag DM and a bunch of hapless players. Read it all in one go, too. XD Oops. One of these days, I’ll have to go back in and read all the comments that you fine folks contributed. ‘Til then, though, happy trails, and thank you, Shamus, for bringing us all together. You can DM a campaign for me any day!

42! also it was hilarious when Arthur tried teaching neanderthals how to play Scrabble, it is also fun to hit people with the hardcover Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has all five novels and 1 story that are in the trilogy (I just refuse to question the trilogy part)

I, too, doubt I’ll ever be able to watch LotR again without lines about PhP, Tony Hawks and combat rolls, but all the laughs were sure worth it ;) Here’s one reader that will definetely continue with Chainmail Bikini… I’m in so many forums already, that one really won’t make a difference.

Your sense of humor, passion for the webcomic, and writing have made this a success. Like many, I came for the webcomic, and stayed for the blog. Keep writing and producing stuff like this, I’ll keep coming back.

Thanks back to you for doing this for all of us. I can’t even begin to imagine the effort it must’ve taken, just pulling all the screen caps out and keeping them sorted and organized so you could find what you needed when you needed it, much less the actual writing and construction of the graphic story. [boggle] It’s been awesome from this end too. {{{}}}

Thanks for everything! I admit, I’m still rather sad that your new offering won’t be screencap-based, because you’re so amazingly good at it (and I’m still hoping you’ll put it to good use again eventually)… but that doesn’t mean I won’t still be avidly reading Chainmail Bikini.

You know you want to give it a break, and then start on Star Wars like we all want you to. :p

Well, I’ll still be able to watch the movies the same way I always did, but only because I already had friends who kept calling out suggested DEX check DCs while Leggomyass was fighting the Oliphaunts. :)

And adding my voice to the chorus of congratulations, Shamus! (Now, if only I could figure out the keyword to search up your videos on YouTube…)

Your thanks to Peter Jackson reminded me of a geeky gripe.. Everyone loves his adaptation.. but nobody seems to notice that his script and even his camera angles are almost identical to the animated version done years earlier. Even the casting .. the actors look _a lot_ like those in the animated movie.. it was like Peter just used the animated movie as a story board for his.

Anyway.. I just always wonder why everyone gushes over his adaptation.. yes.. the ordeal of getting it all on film is worth gushing.. but in my book he blatantly ripped off the animated movie.

Thanks for making such a good comic. Really, past year was much brighter for me because of those laughs.
Are you going to publish a PDF of the comic somewhere, you used to talk about that… I’d download it for sure
Please!

By the way, I’ll bet the reason that nobody said anything is that it’s satire, and people are allowed to satirize movies, books, and anything else without infringing on copyright.

You can parody things – e.g. the people who did The Gamers could do a spoof of Peter Jackson’s movies, using bits of the original scripts and imitations of important scenes. But you can be prevented from using the original copyrighted material (vidcaps themselves) and just pasting words over them, as in DM of the Rings. Another example: Mel Brooks could certainly make Spaceballs, but he couldn’t just take a print of Star Wars and dub a parody soundtrack over it.

Frankly, I’d lean more towards the copyright holder simply not having noticed, which means that DMotR might disappear someday if they do.

It’s not just about whether or not it’s parody or satire, it’s usually also about “Are you trying to make a Buck with it?”. Anyone can make a work of parody, and as long as it is freely distributed and avoids libel, you are pretty much free to do as you choose. Charge for the work, and the original copyright holder has an immense advantage in going to court, as that’s “their money”.

You left someone out of your list of thanks. There’s this guy Shamus who, from what I can tell, had a brilliant premise and injected all manner of awesome humor. I think we all owe him a debt of gratitude.

Seriously, thanks for all the laughs! I’m looking forward to many more in Chainmail Bikini.

Ok, now that THAT’s done, thanks again to Shamus, who made an awesome comic!

And to follow on what you said about Peter Jackson: For us die-hard fans of the book they could have been better, but they could also have been far worse, and all the previous attempts by others pretty much have been.

(And no, I don’t really think it’s much of a rip-off of the animated movies. They weren’t very good, either.)

You’re welcome,Shamus. I admit it feels funny saying that when all I did was read your comic, laugh alot, use it to make my kids laugh, & once in a while add a comment I thought others might like ( all the while hoping people wouldn’t say:” Um, noooo…”)
If I do not respond to Chainmail Bikini, it won’t be because I’m not reading or enjoying it, but I may have trouble figuring out how to do so in the new format.

Hey, I’m a part of geek immortality! Heh. Thanks Shamus for the thank you. This has been more than just a webcomic, it’s been a community and although I appreciate you recognizing many of your more frequent posters, it’s all about you and the work you did. It’s a shame that it’s over, but on the other hand IT’S OVER! One thing I hate is a story that never ends. This one was great all the way through. I’m checking on CB as well, but haven’t posted there yet.

the Goblin, of Russia, does exactly that: writes parody soundtracks. The catch is that he distributes ONLY the soundtracks, without the videos. That leaves a question of how he manages to get the *music* copyright holders not to sue him.

Shamus, it’s been a real pleasure. You’ve made me laugh and you’ve made me cry (with laughter), and the friends I’ve pointed at you have had a great time too. I don’t even remember how I got here, but I’m very pleased that I did.

Here’s to more success in the future. Will you be using your new free time for one of those ‘life’ things I’ve been reading about in the popular press?

(PS: First post! Mine, that is, not the page’s, but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by.)

Loved the comic, really. I also showed some of the comics to my girlfriend, who is a heavy LotR fan, and she loved it. This comic, combined with the thingy where they replaced lots of important words with the word pants, heavily affect our current watching of the Special Extendeds, but it certainly was worth it and makes the movies even more fun.

I’m currently reading through the books again, and while there are so many differences I can quite understand many of the changes, since this way a certain matter of excitement, heavily required for a good movie, was needed.

Now the perfect way of finishing this lovely experience is of course by watching the Badger-scene and the Catapult images. ^^

Just, thanks for it all really. Truly worth the use of the word Awesome and while it’s sad to know I’ll not be scurrying to click here three times a week there is some recompense in the perfection of a completely finished saga.

Thank you, Shamus. How well you have captured the truth that no matter how long a group is playing together, it is only very, very rarely that everyone is on the same page. If you are lucky you -might- be playing out of the same book.

Not left a message before, but wanted to add my thanks for a very humerous, skillful and superbly entertaining comic strip. I started reading when you had about 30 done – and I’ve followed it ever since – checking every week or so to see what’s been added.

In many ways, the movies are *much* better than the book, and I say this as a thirty-five-year fan. Jackson took a marvelous literary exercise, a fake historical epic, and turned it into a “mere” action-adventure film(s). He still did a magnificent job at it.

I prefer the book because there’s more to it, but my wife, who never really got into the book, adores the movies. In my head, I imagine that the movies are the way things really happened, and the novel is the legend that survived.

It’s precisely because the movies are so terrific that they deserve the utter trashing you gave them, Shamus. Thank you! Brilliant work!

While I’m saddened to see it come to a close, I can always return here and chuckle at some of the funniest comics I’ve seen in years. The strip that made it look like Gimli was in a game of Diablo II was probably the funniest, as you can just about feel the rapid mouse-clicking that would be the battle of Helm’s Deep.

Thank you, Shamus, for a delightful comic that has had me laughing until I cried on more than one occasion. Your writing is brilliant, and I hope you keep up the good work on [i]Chainmail Bikini[/i] for a long time to come. If you ever wanted to publish DMotR as a book, I would so buy it.

A friend of mine turned me on to this site a week ago and I have laughed so hard reading these. Not just the fact that you used such great material, but that it reminds me of when I used to game when I was young. Thank you so much for the needed distraction from school (and my kids).